


Smile

by LadyEnterprise1701



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, because let's be honest Lord Melbourne deserved better, meandering into AU by chapter five, the first few chapters are actually fairly historically-accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 19:59:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12565048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyEnterprise1701/pseuds/LadyEnterprise1701
Summary: “You must smile and wave…and never let them see how hard it is to bear.” It was counsel that William Lamb's mother gave him years ago, and it's affected every one of his relationships ever since...until he meets a young Queen who perfects the art of smiling through storms and yet, at the same time, makes smiling a much less difficult thing for him to manage.





	1. Elizabeth

**Author's Note:**

> (*waves*) Hi, guys! This is my first Vicbourne story and a practice run for my Vicbourne-centric NaNoWriMo project...it just wasn't supposed to become a multi-chapter novelette, haha. This first chapter started as an idea I had about where Melbourne might've gotten his "smile and wave and never let them see how hard it is to bear" philosophy...aaaaaaand it sorta sprawled into a 16,000 word character study, especially after I started reading Lord David Cecil's biography of Melbourne. Each chapter title refers to a different influential woman in Lord Melbourne's life, but things get very AU and Vicbourne-heavy by Chapter 5. 
> 
> I own nothing, of course. And as an amateur historian I am obliged to say that I'm glad the real Victoria and the real Albert ended up together. But I love Vicbourne with all my heart. Thanks a lot, Daisy Goodwin. And Jenna Coleman. And Rufus Sewell. You three, I blame you entirely.

He’s all of eight years old when he first hears the ugly words screamed at him by some conceited young heir of English aristocracy—a boy who had no real quarrel with him, yet couldn’t resist touching a nerve in the soft-hearted, dark-haired child of Brocket Hall:  _“Your mother is a whore!”_

There’s a sensation of being hit in the gut, followed by a sting of indignation, followed by a blazing wrath—and little William Lamb catapults into the much bigger, stronger boy so fast that the bully never quite knows what hit him.  

Everyone is astonished. Little William Lamb is…well…normally he _is_ a lamb. 

Nobody ever thought he could be a lion. 

Not even _he_ thought he could be. He’s never fought anybody in his life before today.

When he’s brought to his mother, bloodied, tearful, and squirming, the strong-minded, strong-willed mistress of Melbourne Hall takes charge of her favorite son and steers him to the nearest quiet room. She washes his grimy hands and dabs at the cut on his swollen lower lip. Little William doesn’t cry out, he doesn’t even whimper—but he sniffles and the tears roll down a face that is decidedly cherubic and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the man he calls “Father.”

Elizabeth Lamb, Lady Melbourne, says nothing during her ministrations. He thinks, vaguely, that she’s never been _quite_ this gentle with him. She’s kind, but she’s not…tender. Not like this. Not unless he’s very sick. 

When she finally gets down on her knees, her huge skirts pooling in pastel blue ripples around her, he doesn’t know where to look. His mother has a way of looking people in the eye that either disarms them or makes them throw up their guard. It all depends on who, where, and why she’s doing it. 

He feels neither disarmed nor defensive, though. Just… _vulnerable._

His mother grips his upper arms. Her expression is firm, earnest, and almost desperate. 

“Never let them see how hard it is to bear, my darling,” she whispers. “Every day, every single day of your precious life until you’re dead in the ground, you _must_ smile. You must dance your way through life and never, _ever_ let them see how hard it is to bear.”

He blinks, frowns. “But how can I smile when I’m not happy?”

“You can. Believe me,” she says, with a shaky laugh, “you _can_.”

“Do _you_ smile when you’re not happy?”

“Constantly, my love.”

He frowns harder. His mamma always seems so happy and confident. She’s always laughing. She’s always doing _something_ she enjoys, whether it’s playing the pianoforte or watching him and his little siblings romp in Brocket Hall’s gardens, or hosting grand banquets that he and his brothers sometimes get to peek into before being tucked into bed. 

Mamma, unhappy? 

He never would’ve suspected it. 

“The world doesn’t look kindly on unhappy people, William,” she says. “Especially the world we live in. So you must be brave, and you must fight back. Your smile and your ability to shrug off an insult? _Those_ will be your greatest weapons. Don’t throw them away. Be strong, and make that spine of yours like a rod of iron.”

Here she pokes him playfully in the back, her fingertip running along the knobs of his spine—and he giggles because he’s still only eight and the most ticklish of her children, and she knows exactly where to touch him whenever she wants to hear that merry, ringing laugh of his. A smile flashes over her own beautiful face as he collapses into her lap. She wraps her arms around him, burying her lips in his wealth of dark curls. 

He feels warm and safe, and for a moment he thinks he never wants to leave this safe cocoon of her love. 

“Do I have to smile for _you_ all the time, Mamma?” he asks plaintively. 

She gives him a look of mock horror. “What, you want to come crying to me like your littlest brother whenever he wants his teething ring?”

He giggles. “No. But…but if I’m lonely, can I come and ask you for a hug? Or if Peniston is _tormenting_ me, can I come tell you? Or if—”

She smoothes his hair, cutting him off. “You can come to me with _anything_ that troubles or delights you, my William. Never forget that…do you understand?”

He nods. She presses his head tighter against her soft bosom and rocks him gently. She smells  of lavender and jasmine, and her dark curls brush his nose as she curls her upper body over him. 

He decides not to ask her if Edmund’s accusation was true. The smile on her face is too _real_ , and now that he knows not all of her smiles _are_ , he doesn’t want it to grow hard with effort. 

He doesn’t realize until years later that he kept silent because he didn’t quite believe her when she said he could come to her with anything.


	2. Caro

She’s a fairy: small and lithe, with hair so light that it’s pale gold and skin so milky that when she pricks her finger on a rose one afternoon as they walk through the gardens of Devonshire House, the blood looks garish. He takes her hand and, before Caroline Ponsonby even knows what’s happening, he turns her palm over and wipes the bead of blood with the rougher pad of his own thumb. 

Caro, as she’s known to friends and family, watches him closely, her big green eyes wide with wonder and a flash of excitement. Because she’s all of seventeen and he’s not quite twenty, and they’re both feeling the electric charge of attraction, desire, and a hope for a future where they’re together, always and forever. 

And he isn’t normally like this, either: a chivalric, lovesick romantic. He wonders, though if it’s been lying dormant in his chest all this time, waiting for a Fairy Queen to touch it and make it come alive. He wipes the last trace of blood away, and when he’s assured that the prick is so tiny it won’t bleed anymore, he bends low and presses his lips to the center of her palm. 

Caro gasps. He looks up in time to see her flawless complexion deepen into a glowing pink.

“I love you,” he whispers. “With all my heart, Caro.”

She smiles shakily. “Oh, Will.”

That’s all she says but there’s a world of meaning in the happy breathlessness of her voice. He barely has time to straighten to his full, now-impressive height when she leaps on tiptoe with all the energetic mischief that first caught his attention three years ago. He laughs as he catches her, hands coming to rest on her tiny waist. The sight and sensation of her face so close to his undoes him completely. 

He kisses her for the first time there in the garden, channeling every ounce of his love for her into it, and he’s not surprised when she returns it with equal ardor.

But then, Caro never does anything by halves. 

They’re married soon after, despite her mother’s objections that she’s marrying a step beneath her (the fact that his older brother recently died and he’ll inherit the Melbourne fortune one day doesn’t seem to soothe those concerns). Caro fills him up like a beam of sunlight, warm and fulfilling, and he hopes and prays that he can be her ballast, her anchor, a haven where her wild, untamed spirit can come home to rest. 

Some days, he reads to her while she rests her head in his lap and he runs his fingers through her hair. Other days, when he’s not busy at the House of Commons, they go riding. Caro refuses to ride sidesaddle, so she borrows a pair of her brother’s breeches—and William learns very quickly that she’ll match him gallop for gallop, her shrieking laughter echoing the cries of the rooks as they tear through Brocket Hall’s sprawling acreage. 

He loves it when they draw to a halt, though, because then he can ease his horse close enough and wind an arm around her waist and kiss her. When he pulls back she often still has her eyes closed, reveling in the caress—but when she opens them again they’re twinkling with mischief.

“Catch me if you can,” she whispers, and she’s gone. He laughs and kicks his horse, determined to meet the challenge as the rooks sing louder than ever.

 

————

 

The rides stop when she learns she’s expecting. She bears her pregnancy with surprising patience —but when she wakes him in the middle of the night a few months later, squeezing his arm and sobbing more with fear than pain, he learns there’s a world of darkness coiled up inside his sweet Caro. She’s afraid—deathly so—but of what, he can’t say. 

All he knows is that she can’t stop saying it: “I’m frightened, I’m so frightened, please don’t leave me, _don’t leave me_ , William, _please_ , I love you”—and in spite of the midwives’ protests and both their mothers’ stern disapproval he refuses to leave her side. He holds her hand, he wipes her sweaty forehead with cool cloths, he walks with her up and down the room while she paces and groans through the ebbing pain.

It takes a day and a half, and when an almost-too-big baby boy finally tears out of her without a cry William’s heart sinks. _All this work for nothing…nothing but a dead baby_ he thinks bitterly as he holds a sobbing Caro close.

He thinks it too soon. The midwives give the baby a brisk rub and tap his feet hard, and finally a weak, raspy cry breaks the painful silence. Caro moans in relief and drops her exhausted head against William’s shoulder, and tears of gratitude to a God he’s still not sure he believes in fill his eyes. 

He doesn’t think he’s ever been happier. 

It soon becomes obvious, though: there’s something wrong with his boy. Little Augustus, darling child that he is, he doesn’t thrive like he should. He screams in the night until even William starts to wonder if his crib is full of pins. Caro grows fretful, her nerves rubbed raw by the incessant wailing. There comes a day where she doesn’t even want to see Augustus. 

“He makes me nervous,” she says.

William blinks…and accepts. But he can’t ignore the baby’s inexplicable agony. He takes to caring for Augustus himself every evening when he comes home from his work at Parliament. The contents of Augustus’ diapers are horrendous; the baby flinches at skin-to-skin contact; when he’s only two, he starts having fits. 

But Augustus calms more for his papa than for anyone else. As often as he can, William holds him close and rocks him, hour after hour. When Augustus cries, William sings. When Augustus has a fit, William shouts for the doctor and then bends over his son, smoothing his hair, trying to hold him still so the child doesn’t fall off the bed and hurt himself. 

Caro watches, her face growing harder and more haunted, and William knows she’s trying to numb the pain with party after party and excursions to her childhood home, leaving him and Augustus behind in London. He tells himself he doesn’t mind her leaving. Maybe the distance will be good for her. She’ll come back rested and invigorated, ready to take a deep breath and throw her head back and _smile_ through it, the way he does. The way he’s always done. 

He desperately needs his Fairy Queen to grow a spine of iron right about now. 

He doesn’t know exactly when she meets Byron. He’s too busy with political matters and caring for Augustus when word finally reaches him that Caro and Byron are close—too close—and they’re flounting it for all the world to see. 

It hurts. It hurts like nothing else has ever hurt before. The night when she admits to him in a hysterical fury that yes, she’s gone the full way with the poet—their relationship was consummated back at Devonshire House while William was struggling with a particularly troublesome bill in London—and she can’t go back to Augustus and look at his blank little face one more day or it’ll kill her—and she hates William for letting her flounder in her grief—and it’s _his_ fault that she’d ever want a man like Byron in the first place—the night when she admits all that is the night that William drinks himself into a stupor and doesn’t hear Augustus’ screams echoing down the corridors of their London home. 

When he finds out his precious child was left alone that awful night, the guilt nearly eats him alive. He never does it again, not while Augustus is alive. And he never lets anyone see how much pain he’s in. Not when Caro publishes her sordid novel…not when he catches other women tittering behind their fans when he walks by…not even when his mother—who hates Caro with a passion now—asks him if he’s all right.

He gave his heart to his Fairy Queen. He trusted her with it…and now she’s ripped it out and stomped on it.

So if William Lamb adopts a cool, mirthless smile and an impenetrable demeanor of calm resignation and witty nonchalance, perhaps it’s because it’s easier that way. Otherwise, he’d be a sobbing, drunken mess on the floor of Brocket Hall’s library every evening, trying to shut out the songs of the rooks in the garden. 

 

————

 

When Byron casts her off (as everybody knew he would), Caro is desolate. Somehow she makes her way home, looking so fragile that when William opens the door and she collapses in his arms, he doesn’t even recognize her. 

Everyone tells him to throw her out. Send her packing back to Devonshire House where she belongs, with all its seedy debauchery. 

But he _can’t_. His wounded pride screams at him to ignore her coughs and feeble pleas for forgiveness, but another part of him remembers the girl in the garden with the blood on her finger, the ethereal Fairy Queen who dared him to catch her if he could. That girl still lives somewhere inside this skeleton of a woman, and he decides to give _her_ a chance. 

She fades fast through winter days. He stays by her side and she clings to his hand with faltering strength until the day comes when her fingers lie exhausted in his clasp and her breath is so labored she can barely speak. He strokes her hair, rubs his thumb along her eyebrow. Her skin is grey. His throat tightens.

“I love you,” he whispers just as he did all those years ago. “With all my heart.”

Caro’s eyelids flutter open. Her lips are so dry they’ve cracked. She tries to tighten her fingers around his hands. He feels it only as a slight twitch. 

“Oh, Will,” she breathes. 

It’s the last thing she ever says to him. 

 


	3. Caroline

What is it with him and women named “Caroline?” 

Perhaps he just notices all the various Carolines now. Every time he’s introduced to a woman who bears the name he takes a second look, comparing them in his mind to his Fairy Queen. Are they as beautiful as she was? As clever? As wild?

Caroline Norton is beautiful and clever, but she’s not wild. It’s a relief, to be honest. William Lamb—now 2nd Viscount of Melbourne and Prime Minister of England under His Royal Majesty King William IV—has had his fill of wildness. He prefers stable personalities…and even stabler women.

His longtime (and extremely stable) friend, Lady Emma Portman, introduces him to Caroline Norton. They’re at some sort of fête but he can never remember exactly which one. All he remembers is Mrs. Norton’s kind smile as she curtsies and then the keen earnestness of her grey eyes as she leans closer to him at dinner. 

“Forgive me,” she whispers, “but Emma’s told me you have a son back at Brocket Hall. I understand he’s…poorly?”

William is so surprised he just blinks at her for a moment. “Yes, he, uh…the doctors tell me he’s feeble-minded—but I’ve never thought so. He’s really much cleverer than you’d think.”

Caroline Norton smiles gently. “Does he like to play with other children? You should bring him to our house sometime. My two boys know how it is. They have a cousin with similar challenges, and they know exactly how to include him in their fun.”

“I shall do that,” William says, his mind racing with possibilities. Augustus is eight years old now, silent much of the time— _except_ when he see his father coming. The way his young face  lights up then…it’s what William lives for now. 

So he takes Caroline up on her offer. Her husband’s an ill-tempered boor of a man but she and her young children are delightful. William feels as if he’s found a respite when he sees the Norton boys helping Augustus build a tower of wooden blocks. 

“Most boys wouldn’t enjoy this sort of play,” he remarks quietly. He and Caroline Norton are sitting at a nearby table, a tea tray between them, while the children entertain each other. “Augustus has an eight-year-old’s body but the mind of a child much younger. It must be…tiresome for them.”

She raises her eyebrows. “If it is, then it’s only because they’re focusing more on themselves and their own personal enjoyment rather than that of their neighbor. I want my children to have a mind for their fellow man, Lord Melbourne. What point is there in a self-centered life?”

William smiles wearily. “What point, indeed?”

She suddenly looks startled. “Oh, forgive me. I didn’t mean…I mean, I had no intentions of implying—”

“That mine is a self-centered life?”

“ _No_ —”

“That my wife’s was?” 

Caroline Norton presses her lips together. “That was _not_ my intention, Lord Melbourne.”

“I know it wasn’t.” He smiles again, a little more stiffly this time, as he leans back in his chair and balances his teacup and saucer on his crossed knee. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we’d all be better off if we thought less of our own pain and more of others’. After all, what are _our_ troubles compared to those of, say, a boy like Augustus? Or the impoverished on the other side of London? And yet…” He sighs, his eyes on his son as Augustus balances another block on his growing tower. “And yet there is so little we can do. I often wonder there’s any point in trying.”

Caroline Norton leans over and touches his arm, squeezing firmly. “Even a little compassion is better than no compassion at all. And as I understand it, _you_ have shown more than your fair share in your lifetime.”

William snorts. “Tell that to the idealistic reformers in the House.”

“Well, we cannot make this a heaven on earth in a night,” she says dryly. “And it’s ridiculous for anyone to think one man can right all England’s wrongs in one fell swoop.”

He cuts his grey-green eyes at her and smirks. “Again, tell that to the reformers in the House.”

She draws her hand back and gives him a sly look. “Well…if I were a man, perhaps I would. And I’d tell them, too,” she adds, “what our mutual friend told me: that you would be hard-pressed to find a man among them who would take their dying, wayward wife back into their home without hesitation. If that isn’t compassion, Lord Melbourne, I don’t know what is.”

William says nothing. He lowers his gaze, lets it drift back to the children…and his remorse-sodden mind is suddenly filled with an image of him clinging to the lifeline she’s just tossed to him.  

“Thank you, Mrs. Norton,” he finally murmurs. “You’re a very wise woman.”

She laughs a little bitterly. “Tell _that_ to my husband.”

He glances at her sidelong—but before he can prod, Augustus shrieks with delight as the tower of blocks comes crashing down. 

 

————

 

They visit as often as he can manage it. The old, cantankerous King William IV is a difficult man to serve, and Parliament is a never-ending mess. But Caroline’s children and Augustus play for hours, and his conversations with her are the healing balm he’s needed ever since he first heard rumors about Caro and Lord Byron. 

He doesn’t _have_ to smile for her. She’s gentle but firm, wise but playful, perceptive but sensitive. William finds himself confiding in her, confessing all his hopes and fears for his son, admitting just how much Caro’s betrayal hurt him. Caroline listens intently. She doesn’t judge and she only advises him when he asks her for it, but she helps him talk out his feelings until, one day, he doesn’t feel like he’s trying to find his way out of a dark labyrinth anymore. 

She’s very beautiful, very wise, and very clever. She has all of his mother’s strength of mind, but all of Caro’s depth of feeling. He’s never met a woman quite like her. 

But she’s married, and he remembers it well every time he gets one good look at Mr. Norton’s sullen face or senses Caroline’s nerves are on edge after an argument with her husband. And he feels a prick of warning when he sees her children with Augustus, and remembers how devastating Caro’s absence had been on his little son. 

He will not be a Byron to _these_ children, tearing their mother away from them for the sake of a few months or even a few nights of carnal pleasure. 

Mr. Norton, however, seizes his opportunity before William or Caroline know what’s happening. The man confronts William in his study, sneering that he knows what Lord Melbourne and Caroline are up to, and announces that he doesn’t really care, not that much. But he’ll need to be well-paid for his silence. It wouldn’t do for England’s Prime Minister to be ruined by reports of a criminal conversation. 

William is stunned…then furious. He hasn’t been this angry in _years_. He rises out of his seat, very slowly. The smug look on Norton’s face dissolves as soon as he realizes that Lord Melbourne towers a good head and shoulders above him…and that the lamb can, on a rare occasion, look more like a lion. 

“Get out of my house,” William hisses, “before I throw you out myself.”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Mr. Norton says with just a touch of nervousness. “Not before I’m paid for my silen—”

“D— you!” William explodes. “You can shout it from the rooftops for all I care! I have not laid a finger on your wife—and if you dare bring any accusation against me I’ll fight you tooth and nail for my honor _and_ hers!” 

Norton decides it might not be prudent to further challenge Lord Melbourne on this—at least not in private. Once the fright passes, though, and he’s out of striking distance, he takes his revenge. 

William refuses to give an inch, even when his name is back in the papers, and Caroline denies it with all the passionate eloquence that would make her an incredible orator if she were a man and had the platform. Nobody in the courtroom believes Norton, and that, at least, _should_ be a relief. 

The world, however, is horrifically cruel, and by the time it’s all over and the judge throws the case out, William wishes he’d never been born. He and Caroline might be vindicated, but _her_ reputation is beyond repair. Their friendship and the tender vulnerability they once shared had been on full display for all of England to see. She’d known his griefs in a way no other woman did—but he’d known hers, too. And if Norton can’t snatch any money out of the vast Melbourne fortune, he _can_ get a divorce and full custody of their children. 

And all William Lamb can think is this: he made Caroline Norton miserable because he let her see how hard it was to bear. He couldn’t muster up the courage to keep the smile on his face or his feelings to himself. 

And now she is destitute, isolated, and heartbroken. 

It’s all his fault. 

She leaves London, but not before sending him a note. 

 

> _My dearest William,_
> 
> _Know that I blame you not. We are but two of many thousands of victims of this cruel society. Our vindication may not come in this world—and yet I implore you, do_ _not_ _take this upon yourself. You have enough to bear without eating yourself up with guilt over my fate._
> 
> _I have friends who will care for me, and I will fight with my last breath to reclaim my children, but you, my friend, have a country to lead and a precious child to care for. Don’t lose sight of that._
> 
> _I will forever treasure the wonderful conversations we shared in the garden, with my children and your son in full view and earshot of all we did and said. I regret nothing. I beg you to do the same._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _Caroline_

 

He crumples the note and tosses it into the fire. If anybody found it, it’d probably create more misery for him as well as her. He’d rather die first. 

Still, he resolves to make it right one day. He writes it into his will: his wealth goes to Augustus in the event of his death, but a portion of it will go to her. It’ll be his loudest, most heartfelt apology. It’ll be his way of begging forgiveness for offering her a weak and compromised heart and ruining her life in the process. 

 

————

 

A month after Caroline Norton walks out of their life, Augustus has a fit. 

For the rest of his life William will be glad he was at Brocket Hall with the child when it happened, and not in London. He’s in the library studying an atlas when the door flies open; he turns, surprised and a bit irritated by this violent interruption of his solitude—until he realizes it’s one of the housemaids, white as a sheet and trembling from head to toe. 

“Oh, milord,” she gasps. “You’ve got to come quick.”

He slams the atlas shut; his heart leaps back into his chest and pounds like a racehorse’s. 

“Augustus?” he demands sharply. 

“Yessir. He—he’s fittin’, sir, _bad_ -like. Mrs. Churchill’s sent Harry for the docto—”

William doesn’t wait to hear more. The girl has to throw herself against the wall to keep from being run over. He runs—runs like he hasn’t run in years—and he can hear his normally-indomitable, steady-tempered housekeeper, the woman who’s looked after Augustus ever since Caro left, shouting orders to the rest of the servants in between frantic, pleading screams of the child’s name. 

When he reaches Augustus’ room he freezes in the doorway, sick with horror. His son is seizing in Mrs. Churchill’s arms. His eyes roll into the back of his head, saliva runs down his chin, his teeth rattle with the force of the convulsions. His face contorts in horrible pain. 

William’s seen him have countless fits, but nothing like this. He snatches the child out of the crying woman’s arms and sits on the edge of Augustus’s bed with the boy in his lap, trying to press the small dark head against his shoulder. 

The child is shaking so badly, William can’t hold him still. 

“Augustus! Augustus, look at me. Look at Papa…shh, Augustus, shh!” 

Augustus doesn’t respond; the seizure only intensifies. William’s throat tightens and his eyes fill with desperate tears. In his mind’s eye he’s on his knees, hands clasped to the heavens, screaming at a God he hopes is listening this time. 

_Dear God, not my boy! Take me, take my wife, take_ anything _—but don’t take my boy!_

And then Augustus suddenly chokes and goes stiff. The beautiful dark eyes fix, wide and agonized, on the ceiling. The small fingers are wrapped so tightly around the front of his father’s shirt that he’s dragging William’s shoulders down. 

“Augustus?” William calls hoarsely, patting the child’s cheek. “Augustus, look at me!” 

The beautiful dark eyes glaze over. The little body goes limp. William can hardly see, the tears are spilling so hot and fast out of his eyes. He lays his palm against Augustus’ chest. 

There’s no heartbeat. His beautiful little boy is gone. 

And that’s when William loses it. Some forty years’ worth of emotional facades and practiced self-command crumble as he presses his child tightly against him and his shoulders wrack with the raw, groaning sobs of a man with nothing left to live for. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Victoria'verse it's implied (I thought, anyway) that Augustus was much younger when he died than his actual historical counterpart...which makes sense, seeing as how Rufus Sewell's Melbourne is a little younger than the real one as well.


	4. The Queen

Pity is the last thing Lord Melbourne wants, so he makes sure than nobody gets the opportunity to offer it. He throws himself into his work as Prime Minister, debating with markedly more irreverent ferocity in the House than he’s ever done before and staying up far too late poring over too much paperwork with far too much brandy to keep him company. 

People still whisper about him and the tragedies that haunt him, but he pays them little to no attention. He just focuses on keeping the country together through delicate compromises and careful political footwork. He does take a perverse enjoyment in making the public audience in the Parliament gallery howl with laughter, especially if his clever comments are directed towards disliked members of the House, such as the Duke of Cumberland—but he often wishes he were alone at Brocket Hall where nobody can bother him and he can be alone with his ghosts. 

Because the ghosts never leave him. Often, after he’s dragged himself off to bed, he lies flat on his back with his arm flung over his eyes, his thoughts wandering back to the years of his youth when he courted a fairy and kissed the center of her snow-white palm. Or he’ll remember the way Augustus looked when he was just a few hours old, seven pounds of utter perfection rolled up in a warm blanket. 

Those are the memories he clings to until the weight of loneliness becomes too much. Then he rolls over onto his side and lets the tears burn behind his closed eyelids. 

Still, he has enough to occupy his mind during the day; the ghosts don’t come nearly as often then. Change is on the horizon. The Whigs aren’t nearly as powerful as they once were, and the King is ailing. A few months more and they’ll likely have a new sovereign in the form of a very short, extremely young, horrendously inexperienced _girl_. 

William’s only seen Princess Alexandrina Victoria once, at the King’s disastrous birthday party earlier that year at Windsor Castle. All he knows about her is that she’s completely under the control of her domineering German mother who, rumor has it, wants the power of the crown for herself and her manipulative counselor.

He’s going to have his work cut out for him, that’s for certain.

     

————

 

When the day finally comes for him to offer his services to his new queen, he’s not all that happy about it. Part of it is because he doesn’t know what to expect from _her_. Another part of it is that he’s not looking forward to the drama waiting for him at Kensington Palace. 

Sure enough, the Duchess of Kent’s counselor is the first to meet him and warn him about the new Queen’s girlish instability. William is wise enough to keep from committing himself to any judgments—and besides, there’s something about Sir John Conroy that rubs him the wrong way. He’ll come to his own conclusions about the Queen’s abilities, thank you very much. 

When he’s let into the room where she waits for him alone, he snatches a glance at her before dropping to one knee. She’s tiny, barely five feet tall…but she’s dressed in black and it makes her look older. Her young, round face looks pale against her dark hair, pulled back in a plain, severe knot at the back of her head. 

She stares at him with large, unmistakably intelligent blue eyes as he approaches her, and extends her hand with more elegance than he expected. He kneels, kisses the smooth spot just above her knuckles. Her skin is soft but cold, and he wonders if the old palace is sufficiently warm. 

“May I offer my condolences on the death of your uncle?” he asks once he’s back on his feet. 

She blinks, tips her head back to look at him. 

“He was always kind to me,” she says in a soft, silvery voice—then turns from him as a flash of irritation sparks in her face. “Though he did have some strange ideas about who I should marry.”

William nods, a bit surprised by this abrupt change of subject but willing to indulge her. “Yes, I believe he favored the Prince of Orange?”

“A prince with the head the size of a _pumpkin_ ,” the Queen retorts. 

It’s so startling and such a delightfully clever association— _orange, pumpkin—and the Prince really does have a large head in more ways that one_ —that it’s all William can do to keep the surprised mirth off his face. He contents himself with a careful, “I see you have a keen eye for detail, Ma’am.”

The Queen glances at him warily, as if trying to decide if that was an honest statement or not. William looks away, catches sight of a white-dressed doll in a nearby chair. 

“May I?” he asks. 

She says nothing, so he picks up the doll. _Still young enough to play with them_ , he thinks with a sudden, sympathetic pang. _She may be still young enough, then, to require a Regent after all. God help her, though…if we establish a Regency now she may never come into her own…_

_"_ What’s her name?” he asks, genuinely curious, without a trace of condescension in his voice.

“She doesn’t have a name. She’s Number 123.” The Queen hesitates, adds a little more softly, “My mother gave her to me on my eleventh birthday.”

William raises his eyebrows, intrigued by the concept of an eleven-year-old girl who numbers her dolls rather than names them…and an eighteen-year-old Queen who can barely mention her mother without a pronounced hesitation and diminishing of confidence. He nods his head slightly at the doll’s head. 

“ _With_ the crown?” he prods. 

She gives her head a little shake. “No, that came later. I made it for her on the day I realized I would be queen.”

_Hmm._ He returns the doll to the chair. “And when was _that_?”

She lowers her gaze, paces a little. “I was thirteen. I was having a history lesson with Lehzen. She showed me the family tree, and I looked at it for a long time…and then I realized I was next.”

There’s no happiness or excitement in her voice or expression—just a thoughtful awe. He narrows his eyes, his mind rapidly fitting the pieces of the puzzle. Lehzen is her governess, he knows, a German baroness who, people say, has been more devoted to the Queen’s physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing than the Duchess of Kent. God knows how old Her Majesty might’ve been when she learned the truth if it had been left to her mother. 

“Were you pleased?” he asks. 

The Queen smirks. “I remember thinking my uncle’s crown would be too big for me.”

This time he can’t help but smile—an expression she returns for just a moment, as if she, too, realizes how humorous (and telling) it is for a thirteen-year-old girl to realize she’ll inherit the greatest nation on earth, yet her immediate concern is about the weight and size of the crown. 

She turns down his offer to be her private secretary with surprising firmness, which he accepts as her legitimate decision. This, he thinks as he leaves Kensington, is a young lady intent on making her own choices. She’ll hopefully accept counsel later, once she’s established dominance …but for now, he’ll step back and let her find her way. 

After the way she’s grown up, he can’t say he blames her for reveling in her newfound independence. 

    

————

 

She surprises them all. 

She’s dignified, poised, disarmingly sweet when she wants to be, stubborn and willful when her temper flares—and above all, she’s fiercely determined to be her own woman. Her mother certainly can’t tell her what to do. William tells Emma Portman one evening over dinner that if the Duchess and John Conroy wanted her to wear blue, the Queen would wear pink instead. She’s _that_ rebellious when it comes to them—and again, he can’t blame her after all the years she’s spent being yanked around by their tasteless ambition. They’ve been so desperate to make her dependent on them, they’ve even left gaping holes in her education. The girl barely knows how the English constitution works. 

Still, she’s eager to learn. When he returns to Kensington for their weekly meeting, the Queen peppers him with questions. She wants to know about trade routes, Parliamentary procedure, the state of diplomatic relations with the United States, where and when and if certain reforms can be put in place. 

He hasn’t had a chance to teach anyone since Caro expressed an interest in astronomy years ago. He’d bought her a telescope and books on the subject, and Caro had pored over them and treasured her telescope like it was one of the Crown Jewels. He never realized how much he’s missed that warm satisfaction of sharing knowledge with someone who truly valued it until the Queen looks up at him one day with shining eyes and declares in a happy voice:

“I do believe you’re the best teacher I’ve ever had, Lord Melbourne!”

To which he smiles and bows slightly at the waist and says, “I’m glad if you find me satisfactory, Ma’am. You’re sure I’m not a bore?”

The Queen raises her eyebrows and laughs, incredulous. “A bore? My tutor, Mr. Davies, was the unequivocal _definition_ of a bore. You, sir, are anything but.”

And with that she tosses her head as if daring him to argue…and there’s something in the way her blue eyes twinkle that makes him stop and think: he’s seen that look before. 

Caro made that same face when she dared him to catch her on horseback. 

 

————

 

When she announces she’s moving to Buckingham House, he’s not shocked. In fact, he’s glad for her. It’s new, lavish, and _modern—_ just the thing for a girl-Queen who’s been trapped in dilapidated Kensington Palace her whole life. When she asks him to accompany her on a tour of the mansion, he accepts with cheerful interest.

She prances through the place like she’s eight, not eighteen. More than once William watches, unable to keep a quiet, amused smile off his face, as she lifts her skirts just above her ankles and races ahead of him, her bonnet ribbons flying and her flushed face brimming with excitement. When she hoists herself into her uncle’s throne, they both laugh as her feet dangle over the edge. 

“Yes, I think before your first levee we should probably try to find you a throne that fits,” William teases her gently. 

She grins. “It _is_ rather hard to feel dignified when your feet are six inches from the floor.” She slides out of the oversized throne and strides past him, her skirts just brushing his legs as she spins and gazes up at the high ceiling. “I don’t know why they don’t call this place a palace…”

“ _You_ can call it anything you like, Ma’am,” William says. She glances at him and smiles, and he knows she _will_.

Later, however, her spirits deflate. She sits down on a newly-uncovered settee, worn out from her happy rush through the mansion, and makes an abrupt confession. 

“They don’t believe me capable of being queen.” 

He knows, without her saying so, that she’s talking about her mother and John Conroy. He’s been inspecting the room, but now he turns to face her and realizes her smiles are gone and replaced by an incredible, weighty sadness that no amount of playfulness, wit, or flattery will take away. 

He has a feeling he shouldn’t use any of those methods right now, anyway. Ever since it did nothing for Caroline Norton he’s considered the truth overrated—but right now, the Queen of England needs it. Desperately.  

“Then I think _they_ are mistaken, Ma’am,” he says. “And anyone who dares comment on your stature should be sent straight to the Tower.”

She smiles a little at that. “Do we still do that? Send people to the Tower?”

He cracks a smile. “It’s reserved for the very worst in the kingdom.”

The Queen laughs weakly and ducks her head. He decides to go on, injecting every ounce of honesty and earnestness into his voice. 

“I’ve only known you a short while, Ma’am, but I’m confident you’ll bring great credit to the monarchy. It’s true, your education may be lacking in some areas, but you have a natural dignity that cannot be learnt.”

She lifts her head, looks up at him through her dark eyelashes. “You don’t think I’m too short to be dignified, then?”

William looks her dead-straight in the eye. “To me, Ma’am, you are every inch a queen.” 

She stares at him for a moment, and he can’t tell if she’s surprised or relieved or just trying to process this kind of encouragement, and he wonders if maybe, just maybe, he’s the only one who’s ever believed in her like this. He doesn’t believe in much, not anymore. But he believes in _her_ , even if he isn’t quite sure why. 

She rises from the settee and approaches with exaggerated solemnity, and he holds his breath, not knowing what she’s going to do or say. She stops, tilts her head back. A smile tugs at the corner of her pretty mouth. 

“Thank you… _Lord M._ ”

He blinks, then smiles before he can stop himself. Her face only lights up even brighter when he makes no protest over the new nickname. She spins on her heel and marches out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “What do you say we go and take a look at the gardens, Lord M?” 

_Lord M._ William shakes his head and chuckles to himself, then throws his shoulders back and replies, “Right behind you, Ma’am.”

 

————

 

She tugs at something in the center of his chest…something that hasn’t been stirred up in a long, long time: a desire to help…to nurture. _To protect._  

When she staggers against him at the coronation ball he feels something else he thought had died a long time ago, too. But _that_ something frightens him. He’s on the wrong side of forty-five, she’s almost nineteen years old, and it’s preposterous and borderline treason the way the sensation of her slender frame falling in his arms nearly undoes him.

And yet…and yet that night he doesn’t lie in bed staring at the ceiling letting his thoughts run back to his youth and his Fairy Queen. His mind keeps wandering back to a real Queen in diamonds and embroidered silk who had a little bit too much to drink this evening. 

She’d been beautiful, though. Beautiful, headstrong, enchanting. And she’d made him wish, just for an instant, that he was two decades younger and _not_ her Prime Minister. 

Thankfully she either doesn’t remember the incident the next morning, or she chooses not to mention it. It’s just as well; she has far more sordid things to worry about. 

Over the next few weeks the tension between the Queen, her mother, John Conroy, and Lady Flora Hastings comes to a head. William finds himself trying to drag his sovereign from the brink of scandal and failing miserably. She hates Conroy and Lady Flora too much to see different explanations or possibilities; she simply wants to show _them_ how it feels to be humiliated in front of the whole world. They did it to her for years. Now the shoe’s on the other foot.

She doesn’t realize the damage she’s done to _herself_ until it’s too late. 

When the final blow comes and Lady Flora is dead from a combination of cancer and shame, he finds the Queen sobbing in Buckingham Palace’s music room. It’s a bad day to have an emotional breakdown: an important military review begins in an hour, yet the Queen still wears one of the white muslin gowns her mother and Lehzen (oddly enough) both prefer her to wear because (she says) it makes her look childish and they want to keep her that way. No sign of her blue-and-red uniform anywhere—or of her adorable, loyal spaniel, either. She sits numbly on the piano bench, her back to the instrument, her face blotchy from crying. 

William sits down next to her. Says something about how she needs to get ready.

When she speaks, it breaks his heart. 

“I _can’t_ ,” she whispers, barely loud enough for him to hear, her blue eyes brimming and shot through with terror. “I can’t do it.”

He understands that feeling of helplessness. He knows she’ll now face the scorn and condemnation of people who don’t know any better, who think the Queen just drove a high-ranking lady of the court to her grave out of pure spite. Maybe there _was_ some elemnt of revenge thrown in, but he believes the Queen is more naive than cruel. She’s still learning. Mistakes are inevitable. 

Her pain and remorse are palpable, though, and William curses the empathy roiling once more in his heart. Everything in him wants to wrap his arms around this young, vulnerable woman and let her cry into his chest. He wants to tell her it’ll be all right. He wants to kiss the top of her dark head and soothe her fears. 

It takes every ounce of willpower not to touch her. 

But he touches her in a different way, even as the little voice in the back of his head tells him not to.

He opens up. He makes himself vulnerable for the first time in years. 

“I never told you why I was late for the Coronation Ball,” he says quietly. 

The Queen sniffles, looks up…and he can’t stop now that he’s begun. He tells her about Augustus. He tells her how he didn’t want to live after his little boy went stiff and cold in his arms. The Queen stares at him as he speaks in soft, halting tones, trying to keep himself from breaking down as the memories rush into his head like a flood…although he does think that if he’s going to weep in front of anyone, he’d rather do it in front of this girl. 

He pulls himself together, though, and assures her of what he knows is the absolute truth: that _she_ , his beautiful, brilliant, incredibly _human_ Queen, has given him a reason to go on and live one more day and then another. Not that he puts it quite in those terms—he leaves out the brilliant and beautiful part—but he allows himself the luxury of thinking them anyway. And he tells her what his mother told him an eternity ago: 

“You must smile and wave…and _never_ let them see how hard it is to bear.”

The Queen—his brave, beautiful Queen—her face crumples and she shakes her head. “I can’t do that forever, Lord M. If I smile and wave all the time I—I think I’ll crack and break into a million pieces…”

“I know,” he murmurs. “Which is why you can _always_ come to me. Or to Lehzen,” he adds hastily. “I think you can depend on the two of us, at least, to give you any strength you need…and not expect anything in return.” 

She pulls in another ragged breath; he reaches into his breast pocket and gives her a handkerchief. She wipes her eyes and nose, lowers her head as she tries to steady her breathing. He wants to rub her back, stroke her cheek with the backs of his fingers. He clenches his hands together between his knees and does neither. 

“Thank you, Lord M,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

     

————

 

They slip into a routine. He comes everyday and they spend hours together talking over matters of state. The Queen is a quick learner. Soon she’s navigating her way through British politics with an elegance and intelligence that makes him swell with pride. 

When he’s not with her, he thinks of her constantly. He has a new spring in his step, an eagerness to get on with his work because it’s all done in _her_ service. When she laughs he can’t help but smile, and when she smiles at _him_ , something gets all warm and tight in his chest. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, not at all. 

People are noticing. He knows that. Emma Portman definitely knows something has changed and shifted within him. The Duchess of Kent eyes him distrustfully; so does Baroness Lehzen. But he doesn’t really care until his government collapses around him, he’s forced to resign…and the Queen fights for him tooth and nail. 

She’s not supposed to. As the monarch, she’s supposed to remain impartial. He expected her to be upset— _he’s_ upset—but he never thought she’d move heaven and earth to keep him at her side. 

He tries to get her to surrender. He urges her to invite the Duke of Wellington to serve as her new Prime Minister, and when Wellington refuses, he _begs_ her to extend an overture to Sir Robert Peel. But the Queen refuses to give up any of the ground she’s gained over the past year and a half. She won’t lose her ladies-in-waiting, and she won’t lose Lord Melbourne. 

William can’t decide if he’s flattered or embarrassed when Peel finally throws up his hands. The disgusted Tories blink first, throwing the reins of government back at the open-mouthed Whigs. A bit sheepishly, William mounts a horse and heads back up the familiar road to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen’s permission to form a government. 

He decides exactly how he feels about the whole situation as soon as he sees her. She’s trying to unveil the first official portrait of herself and the concealing drape won’t give way no matter how much she tugs on the rope. William sidles up to her and murmurs, ever so softly, “May I be of service, Ma’am?”

They haven’t seen each other in days—the last time they did see each other, they had a shouting match over the sacredness of the Constitution and the need to put duty above inclination—so it’s no wonder she’s startled by the sight of him. But the smile that breaks over her face settles the matter for him once and for all. 

He’s neither flattered nor embarrassed by the way she’s fought for him and won. 

He’s simply _glad_. So, so glad.


	5. Victoria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100% Vicbourne indulgence from here on out. You've all been warned ;)
> 
> (And apologies to the real Albert, who I actually like a great deal. I'm just not crazy about the one in the show, and will always prefer Jonathan Firth's Albert. Sorry.)

He never can figure out the exact moment when he stops calling her “the Queen.”

Oh, he never takes improper liberties with her name _out loud._ In public he always addresses her as “Your Majesty” or, far more often, “Ma’am.” When he speaks of her to others, she’s always “the Queen” or “Her Majesty.” William Lamb is nothing if not a stickler for protocol. 

But somewhere along the way, either while he’s preparing dispatches and reports for his daily visit to the palace…or while he’s watching her play with her spaniel in the garden…or while she’s sketching him and scolding him to “hold still, Lord M, or I’ll never get your nose right”—he stops calling her “the Queen” in his head. 

She is simply _Victoria_ now. The name is foreign on English tongues but it conjures up images of _victory_ , _triumph_ , _grandeur_ , and in that sense it’s the perfect name for her _._ She has his mother’s mind, Caro’s heart, and Caroline Norton’s compassion—but Queen Victoria has something else that none of those women did, something that’s all hers. She has _majesty_. 

Not to mention an independent streak a mile wide.

William smiles to himself as he sits in his study, not really paying attention to the bulletins in front of him. Victoria’s confidence has only risen since the Bedchamber Crisis. She’s thinking for herself now, and if that means she’s a little less dependent on his counsel, he’s perfectly all right with it. After her painfully obvious partiality for him nearly caused a constitutional disaster, he’s more than happy to see her charting her own political course. 

Emotionally, though, she’s keeping as close to him as she ever did. And he finds he’s all right with that, too. She knows he’ll be there for her, no matter what. She brings all her questions, fears, and hopes to him, always with an honesty, curiosity, and trust that make him feel both unworthy and incredibly honored. 

He knows it won’t last forever. His political career has merely been given a lease on life. One day it’ll run out and he’ll _have_ to leave, no matter what Victoria wants or fears. So he throws himself into teaching her as much as he can. Robert Peel will eventually succeed him, but by God, William’s going to make sure she’s better prepared for it next time. 

He’s got make sure _he’s_ prepared for it, though. He tries telling himself, “You’ll have to leave her one day,” hoping that if he says it enough times it’ll be easier—but every time, it nearly kills him. It frightens him, how much he needs her. She depends on him for counsel and encouragement, yes, but Victoria gives _him_ hope. She’s full of the wide-eyed optimism that makes the future so much brighter than it may end up being. William doesn’t believe in much anymore, but Victoria makes him believe England might actually survive this century strong and intact, with its head high and its face to the sun. 

She makes him believe, too, that he’s not a useless cog in a machine. He has a purpose now—to train, protect, and nurture her. He’d die for her if he had to. 

The Lamb, he thinks ruefully as he shuffles through the bulletins, could turn into a Lion again if anyone so much as laid a finger on his Victoria. 

And then he stops, glances up, stares at nothing in particular, and the realization hits him hard.

_God help me…I_ love _her._

After a moment’s exhilaration he cringes. He’s so much older than her—she’s his Queen— she’ll have to marry an eligible prince one day— _he has no right._

But he _loves_ her _._ With all his scarred, worn-out heart. He’ll love Victoria till the day he dies. 

He doesn’t know real fear, though, until the day he realizes she loves him back. 

 

————

 

Emma’s been making odd comments for months now about how fond Victoria is of him—and he would have to be deaf not to have heard the way people call Victoria “Mrs. Melbourne” behind their backs. But Emma’s always been a tease, and who cares what people say? People will always talk, even when they have nothing but unfounded rumors to chew on.

But when King Leopold of Belgium mentions it in his heavy, threatening way—“I’ve seen the way my niece looks at you, Lord Melbourne”—William’s world screeches to a halt. 

Leopold has an agenda: he wants his nephew Albert to marry Victoria. If he thinks Lord Melbourne is in the way, Leopold won’t hesitate to cut the Prime Minister down. If he does that, William will be ruined. A sexual scandal involving Caroline Norton was bad enough. One involving the Queen of England would be catastrophic. 

William won’t let Victoria suffer the way Caroline did. She’s brilliant, she’s a rising star, she’s England’s greatest hope, and she’s morally and physically pure as the wind-driven snow. 

He will not let Leopold destroy that. 

So he steps back. He goes to Brocket Hall, hoping to put some space between him and Victoria, hoping _that_ will convince Leopold that he accepts the warning and recognizes the need for Victoria to focus on a more suitable…relationship. 

When she follows him to Brocket Hall, her beautiful face barely concealed by a sheer black veil, his first instinct is to groan in frustrated misery. 

His second instinct, though? It’s more natural, more in tune with his actual emotions: the sight of her quiets his heart. 

She grounds him like his mother did. She fills him up like sunshine like Caro did. She soothes him, like Caroline did. 

But she also inspires him, like only _she_ can do. 

He loves her. And even though his heart is breaking because he knows he’s got to put an end to this, right here and right now, he can’t help but love the sight of her walking towards him through a carpet of brown, crunching leaves, pulling the veil back from her face, lifting her clear blue eyes to meet his grey-green ones.

The rooks cry out in the trees above them, reminding him of Caro, as Victoria whispers, her voice quavering with emotion, “You are the only companion I could ever desire.”

And the rooks go eerily silent when he shakes his head and urges her, his voice rough with suppressed heartbreak, “But _you_ must keep your heart intact for someone else.”

 

————

 

A couple of nights later he can’t help it. He goes to the costume ball she’s throwing for Leopold, knowing full well that she’s already chosen to go as Queen Elizabeth I—Gloriana—the Virgin Queen—and knowing full well that his portrayal of Leicester will send tongues wagging. 

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, loved Queen Elizabeth his whole life.

Victoria looks confused when she first sees him, then tries to put up an indifferent façade. It starts crumbling as soon as he slips his arms around her for a waltz. 

“I didn’t think I would dance with you tonight,” she says. Her imperious tone sounds forced. The corner of his mouth tilts upward in a wry but gentle smile. 

“It would be cruel of Elizabeth to refuse her Leicester,” he replies. 

Victoria narrows her eyes. “Leicester was her companion?” 

“Yes. He had a wife, but…she died.”

He looks her in the eye. Victoria blinks, gulps. She understands, he can tell, and he suddenly finds himself glancing at her lips, wishing they were alone, wishing he could cup her young, fresh face in his hands and kiss her breathless and tell her, _Oh Victoria, my Victoria, whatever you do don’t doubt how much I love you, my precious, precious girl…_

“And they…they never married?” she whispers, breaking the spell.

William swallows, lowers his gaze to the orchids pinned to the front of her bodice.

“I think they knew they were in no position to marry,” he murmurs. “No matter their inclination.”

Victoria draws a shivery breath. William pauses in the middle of the dancing floor. He _almost_ gives in then, _almost_ winds his arms around her, _almost_ kisses her, _almost_ throws all sense of propriety to the wind. But in the end he only smiles sadly at her, forces himself to unwind his arm from her waist, and releases her hand with a final, reassuring squeeze. 

_At least she knows now why I did it_ , he tells himself as he turns away. 

 

————

 

Prince Albert comes to London a few weeks later at Leopold’s request (or order), and William can tell Victoria is trying _not_ to like him. She’s the soul of honesty and at first she can hardly bear to look her cousin in the eye, she dislikes him that much. 

_Or does she just dislike the way her mother and uncle are manipulating them both_? William muses. He knows all too well how Victoria hates being a pawn. 

But then something shifts. He watches Victoria give Albert her gardenias _—his_ gardenias, the ones he sent her that evening from Brocket Hall—and he sees the gentle pity in her beautiful eyes and her deep, brimming desire to ease Albert’s pain…and William Lamb’s heart clangs shut. 

At least, he thinks, she’s finding good, genuine reasons to reach out to the young, melancholy prince. She’s always been eager to help others. If Albert is is need of comfort and compassion, Victoria will give both gladly and find great happiness and fulfillment in doing so. 

For _him_ , though, it’s hard to watch. He puts forth every effort to appear pleased, relieved, and satisfied that the Duke of Cumberland’s chances of becoming king are getting smaller by the second. But Victoria isn’t confiding in him—it’s almost as if she’s afraid to—and she seems distracted when he comes for their daily briefings. 

_This is good_ , he tells himself. _This is right. This is the way it should be. England’s future is getting brighter by the minute._

If he’s heartsick, that’s _his_ problem. 

He starts calling her “the Queen” in his head again. 

 

————

 

She announces they’re all going to Windsor and asks him to come along. He tries to excuse himself but she’s anxious that he stay close by. Of course he can’t say “no,” but he doesn’t like the way her confidence seems shaken. He hopes she isn’t trying to make herself a meek and docile thing in order to please Albert. She deserves better than that.

He stays on the sidelines at the castle, trying to smile and steer the conversation towards light subjects so he won’t get himself in trouble with Leopold or the princes. Even when Albert challenges him about reforms, he defends himself only as far as he needs to. There’s no point in creating a scene by pointing out that Albert is only twenty years old and, unlike himself or the Queen, has never tried to keep a free-spirited country together. _She_ looks uncomfortable during the exchange and darts William a grateful look when Albert finally drops the subject. 

Albert is right, of course, about Dickens accurately portraying the conditions of the poor…but after all the times he’s driven the streets of London himself and seen those conditions firsthand, William doesn’t need the shock factor of _Oliver Twist_. If Albert marries the Queen he’ll see it himself…and he’ll realize just how hard it is, trying to shove reforms through a Parliament that barely roused itself enough to abolish slavery a few years ago. 

William is tired. Tired of arguing. Tired of fighting. 

Tired of never showing anyone how hard it is to bear. 

 

————

 

The Queen, Prince Ernst, Prince Albert, and Lord Alfred go riding the next day. She asks William to come along but he declines, saying he has some dispatches from the House that need attending to. The Queen looks disappointed, but she nods, twirls her riding hat between her fingers, and leaves him with a soft rustling of skirts. 

He wants to call her by her real name just then. He wants her to turn around again with wide, questioning eyes. He wants to open his arms, see her smile brighter than she’s done in weeks, and feel her throw herself against him and wrap her arms tightly around his torso. He wants to bury his lips in her hair just once.  

He sighs, shakes his head, takes up the parcel brought to him early this morning. He has work to do and no time for daydreaming. 

Lord Alfred returns a couple of hours later, smiling knowingly. He and Ernst have come back alone; the Queen and Albert are still out riding. William raises his eyebrows at that and has a feeling she’ll come back an engaged woman. She’ll be flushed, happy, and full of plans, which he’ll need to smile back and act as if he’s never heard happier news. 

But she doesn’t come back. William is reading in the sitting room, his work completed—Leh-zen is embroidering on the settee with Emma Portman—the Duchess of Kent and King Leopold are playing a game of chess (and the Duchess is beating her brother handily)—when Albert suddenly storms in. His shirt is torn and he’s glowering. William shuts his book. 

“Albert?” Leopold calls, his voice tense. “Where is Victoria?”

Albert glares at his uncle. “I left her in the forest.”

“You _what?!_ ” the Duchess of Kent cries. William leaps to his feet; Emma is at his side in an instant, her hand on his sleeve; Lehzen stares at him in a silent, horrified plea. King Leopold looks as if a feather could knock him over.

This probably _wasn’t_ how his plan was supposed to go.

“Where is she?” William demands, regaining his voice first.    

“I do not know,” the prince mutters, raking a hand through his disheveled hair. He refuses to look at the Prime Minister. “But her dog is hurt. The foresters here should be ashamed, leaving traps out for helpless animals…”

“You talk of traps, Your Highness, yet _you_ left the Queen _alone?!_ ”

“ _William_ ,” Emma whispers. 

Albert blinks, no doubt realizing how hypocritical he just sounded. William throws his book into the sofa so hard, it smacks loudly against the cushion. Emma winces, the Duchess gasps, Lehzen covers her mouth with her hand—but if they expect William Lamb to resort to further violence, they’re greatly disappointed. Giving Albert a good shake will do him no good and it’ll only be a waste of time. Besides, it isn’t William’s way. It never has been. 

Instead he storms past Albert and out of the room. He can hear the Duchess of Kent wailing in her alarm and Leopold thundering his disapproval, but someone else is running up behind him—either Emma or Lehzen, judging by the rustle of silk.

“William? Where are you going?”

He glances over his shoulder without slowing his pace. It’s Emma, her face drawn. 

“I’m going to find the Queen,” he says sharply. “Be ready with warm clothes and the doctor for when I get back. If Dash is hurt—”

“Oh God, William.” Emma has to run to keep up with him. “If anything has happened to Dash—”

“—I’ll kill Albert.”

She clamps a hand on his arm. “William, _no_. They have quarrelled, that much is obvious, but _he_ hasn’t hurt the dog. I’m sure he hasn’t hurt her, either. William, look at me.”

She reaches up, cups his cheek in one hand, forces him to look at her. William clenches his jaw but doesn’t try to avoid her gaze. Emma raises her eyebrows. 

“Don’t do or say anything you’ll regret, William,” she whispers. “Promise me.”

William breathes. He gently pulls Emma’s hand from his cheek and squeezes it. 

But he doesn’t promise. 

 

————

 

He swings himself onto a horse and tears into the forest behind the castle. It’s cold and damp; the clouds are heavy with incoming rain. William rides harder than he’s ridden in years, urging his horse down well-worn paths so similar to the ones he and Caro used to explore at Brocket Hall. 

He pulls to a halt, looks around. Winter-barren trees surround him on all sides. 

“Ma’am?” he shouts. “Ma’am, if you can hear me, call out!”

Silence. William sets his teeth and spurs the horse forward. The rain begins as a sprinkle, then a steady downpour. He’s wearing his overcoat and hat, but no gloves. Within minutes his hands feel slick and icy. He stops again, sits very straight in his saddle.

“Ma’am?” he bellows. “ _Victoria?_ ”

The rain against a carpet of fallen leaves dampens almost every other noise—but somehow, as if by some miracle, he hears a faint, high-pitched bark in the distance. He stiffens and holds his horse as still as he can. 

“Victoria?” he shouts again. “ _Victoria!_ ”

“I’m here! I’m here—oh, somebody please _help me!_ ”

She sounds frightened and desperate and William jabs his poor horse harder than he intended. A few moments more and he catches sight of a small, staggering figure in a sodden navy-blue riding habit, cradling a limp bundle of fur in her arms. Her hair’s come undone and hangs dripping down her back; her wet skirts drag around her feet. When he comes into her line of vision she lifts her head and her wet, pale face contorts with grief.

“Oh…oh, Lord M,” she sobs. 

He doesn’t hesitate: he leaps out of the saddle even though he’s still several yards away and he _runs_. He doesn’t ask questions; he simply grabs her and pulls her into him, supporting her when her knees give way and holding her and Dash to his chest.     

“Shh,” he whispers over her wracking sobs. “Shh, it’s all right.”

“No, no, it’s _not_ ,” Victoria moans. “I-I think Dash’s leg is broken…”

“We can tend to him at the castle, Ma’am. Listen to me: I’m going back for my horse—see, he's right over there—and we’ll ride back to the castle together, all right? But first, I want you to put this on…”

He jerks his arms out of his coat; to his relief she accepts it without a murmur and even lets him button her up with Dash inside. When he still isn’t sure if she understood what he said about the horse and riding back, he cups her face in his hands.

“Victoria? I’m going for the horse. I’m coming straight back, I promise.”

“I know, you already said that,” she sniffles—not because she’s crying, but because the rain is running down her nose. “Go on.”

_That’s my girl_ , he thinks, and he almost forgets himself, _almost_ kisses her forehead, but once again he holds himself back; she's had enough of a shock for one afternoon. By the time he trudges back to the waiting horse and leads it to Victoria, she looks like a queen again. A waterlogged one, to be sure, but still a queen. 

He doesn’t have a sidesaddle, of course, so he has to avert his eyes from her stockinged legs when he pulls her up and she settles uncomfortably in front of him in his saddle. Once she's secure he slips his arms around her, grabs the reins, and spurs the horse back towards the castle. 

It’s nearly dark and still drizzling when they return. Leopold, the Duchess, Emma, and Lehzen spill out of the castle as they ride up. Everyone’s asking frantic questions, someone’s even saying the veterinarian is waiting with Dr. Clarke, but William ignores them all, too busy helping Victoria off the horse. She’s numb with cold, shivering from head to toe. Lehzen snatches Dash out of the coat; Victoria reaches out to her pet, her fingertips grazing his damp fur, whispers "Be careful with him, Lehzen"—and staggers. William catches her just in time, sweeping her into his arms and cutting his way through the press of worrying friends and family as if they aren’t there at all. 

When he looks down, Victoria has her eyes half-closed and her tired head nuzzled against his shoulder. Lehzen sprints up the stairs ahead of him leading the way to the Queen’s bedchamber, occasionally glancing over her shoulder just to make sure Victoria really is all right. If she’s scandalized by the sight of Victoria burying her face deeper into her Prime Minister’s chest, she doesn’t say a word. William doesn’t care if she sees it, either. He simply holds Victoria even tighter, squares his shoulders, and when Lehzen isn’t looking, he bends low and presses his lips to the top of Victoria’s head, so softly she doesn’t even notice. 

He lost Caro to a foolish man, Caroline to an abusive one. If he loses Victoria to someone who doesn't see _her_ as the precious thing she is…

_Dear God…flesh and blood cannot stand this._

 

————

 

They return to London, and within a week the princes and Leopold are on their way back to the Continent. Victoria shows no regret whatsoever. She’s far more worried about Dash having to hobble around on a bandaged paw than about whatever happened in the Windsor forest. 

William doesn’t pry. Her ordeal triggered a nasty cold—no surprise there—so he hasn’t seen much of her anyway. Emma says she hasn’t breathed a word to any of her ladies, her mother, or even Lehzen about what happened between her and Albert. The Queen is pensive, she says, but not depressed. She clearly has a lot on her mind, but isn't interested in sharing it with anybody at the moment. 

William decides he'd better keep his distance until, a couple of evenings after the princes and Leopold take their leave, he’s finally summoned to the palace from Dover House. He can’t help but feel curious. What will she do now? Will she make overtures to another royal house for a suitable husband right away? Will she hold off a few more years? Or will she declare herself a Virgin Queen once and for all?  

He really doesn’t know, but he refuses to consider any possibilities that involve himself. 

He finds her in the library and stops short at the sight of her. She’s standing at the window, her hair down in the simple yet almost daring style of ringlets draped over one bare shoulder; her dress is a deep purple, and she’s got the curtain pulled back and her eyes on the street below. 

The girl he fell in love with is gone. She’s a woman now, a strong, independent Queen with a hint of maturing sorrow in her new demeanor, and she takes his breath away.

“You asked to see me, Ma’am?” he asks once he’s got his voice back. 

Victoria looks up with a start, then lets the curtain drop and clasps her hands at her waist. He steps forward, drops to one knee, kisses the hand she extends to him. Her skin is much warmer tonight than it was at Windsor Castle…or the day he first met her, for that matter. 

“Lord M,” she says, quiet but firm, “I have something very important to discuss with you.”

He smiles a little at that. “Our conversations are always important, Ma’am.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Except when we’re discussing my old dolls’ dramatic back stories?”

William pulls a thoughtful look. “On the contrary, Ma’am, I find _them_ an important insight into the way your mind worked when you were a child.”

Victoria’s smile turns into a playful smirk. “Don’t be facetious, Lord M.”

“Nothing facetious about it.” He pauses, looks her in the eye. “I’ve never lied to you, Ma’am. I’m not about to start now.” 

A vertical crease appears between her eyebrows. Victoria purses her lips, tilts her head to one side. “I think you _did_ lie once, Lord M.”

That startles him. “Did I?”

“Yes. Actually, I think you may have done it twice.”

Now he’s really intrigued—and worried. He clasps his hands in front of him and frowns. 

“I hope you'll enlighten me, Ma’am, because I’m at a loss. I can’t remember ever deliberately—”

“The first time, you told me you were like a rook. You said you mated for life.”

He forces himself not to wince at the memory. “Yes, Ma’am.” 

“Well. If you mated for life then you never would’ve had the inclination to marry a Queen. It never would’ve crossed your mind. And yet you admitted as much to me at the costume ball.”

He glances to the side, not quite sure where she’s going with this. “And the second time?”

Her face softens; she looks less like she’s searching for a missing piece of a puzzle and more like she’s reaching out hopefully to him in the dark. “The second time you didn’t even say a word. Perhaps it wasn’t even a lie. Maybe you just failed to take your own advice.” 

William frowns. “Which was…?”

“To never let anyone see how hard it is to bear.” Victoria takes a step closer and he catches a hard contraction of her throat. He knows her cues: when she swallows like that, she’s nervous. “Do you remember telling me that, Lord M?”

“Yes…”

“And yet your feelings were written all over your face the entire time we were at Windsor.” 

For a moment William doesn’t think he could speak even if he tried. Victoria closes the last of the distance between them, seizing his hands in both of hers and squeezing _hard_. 

He can’t help it: his heart pounds at the contact. 

“I am _so_ sorry,” Victoria whispers, her eyes filling with tears. “I wanted you close by. I was so afraid of being left alone with nobody to support me—and I never once thought how horrible it might be for you. But you just stood there for days…watching, smiling, trying so hard…and I was a stupid, blind _idiot—_ ”

Before he can stop himself William tears his hands free and cups her face in his palms. Victoria freezes under his firm (but not rough) grip. 

“Never, _ever_ let me hear you call yourself such vile names again,” he whispers through gritted teeth. “I won’t stand for it.”

Victoria squeezes her eyes shut, pulls in a sobbing breath, and the tears spill down her cheeks. He can’t bear it anymore. He pulls her into him and wraps his arms around her as tightly as he dares, pressing his cheek against her hair while she cries softly into his chest. 

This, he thinks, is bliss. 

When she finally calms, she doesn’t lift her head. She simply nuzzles it into a more comfortable position against him, and when he looks down at her she has her eyes closed. Her fingers open and close slowly against his waistcoat. 

“Do you know what Albert said to me?” she whispers. “In the forest at Windsor?”

_Here it comes, then._ “You’ve never told me, Ma’am, so I’ve only been able to guess.”

Victoria is silent for a moment. Her voice is very soft when she finally speaks. 

“He said I ought to marry _you_.”

Now his pounding heart jumps into his throat. Victoria lifts her head, her hands still on his chest.

“Albert _knew_ ,” she whispers. “I’ve tried so hard to move on, I really have…and yet even Albert knew I _hadn’t_. If _he_ could tell after just a few weeks how much I still love you, surely you can see it too. And I know you still love me. It’s been written all over your face for the past two weeks, Lord M, so don’t you dare try to deny it!”

William says nothing. He swallows, his hands on her arms just above her elbows, his eyes on her upturned, pleading, defiant face, and he knows: only a heart of stone could refuse her now. He tried to shore his up, build walls, maybe even dig a moat—but _Victoria_ tore down all his defenses without realizing it, and she’s cradled and soothed it ever since. 

When she looked him the eye that afternoon at Brocket Hall and said she’d never leave him, she’d _never_ do such a thing—he believed her. Just like he believes her now when she says she still loves him. He sighs, touches her soft brown hair, and he doesn’t miss the way she breathes in and shivers a little under his touch. 

“I can’t deny it,” he whispers. “I just told you I’ve never lied to you. _Deliberately_ , that is,” he adds quickly, and she smiles. “And as I said before, I won’t begin now.”

Again Victoria closes her eyes, but this time she isn’t breaking down into tears. She leans into his touch, turning her face into his palm. When she opens her eyes she’s smiling softly, bravely, adoringly. 

“Lord Melbourne,” she says, “will you marry me?”

He gives a laughing sigh. “ _Yes_ —but on one condition!" he adds quickly when her eyes light up and she bites her lower lip to keep back a happy cry. "I will marry you, Victoria, and gladly...as long as you  _first_ accept my resignation as Prime Minister. I think we’d all rather avoid a constitutional crisis.”

Victoria laughs breathlessly. “Yes, I think we’d rather.”

“And you do realize Sir Robert Peel will likely succeed me.”

“Yes—and I don’t care.” 

“Even though he’ll probably demand you give up your Whig ladies?”

Victoria hesitates, but then she purses her lips and holds her head high with the proud majesty he’s come to expect from her. “I love my ladies, but I love _you_ more.”

William lets himself smile fully at that. He lowers his hand from her cheek and slowly wraps that arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist. Victoria’s breath catches again and she flushes, but she doesn’t look away. 

“My Victoria,” he whispers. “How I love you.”

She beams, and when he leans in and kisses her for the first time she stands on tiptoe and returns it as fiercely as she knows how.

He has a feeling that a couple of hours away at Brocket Hall, the rooks are singing. 


	6. Vicky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Totes AU now. Happiness abounds. (*throws confetti*)
> 
> Pretty sure I've read other AU fanfics where Melbourne is given a dukedom before marrying Victoria, so I'm acknowledging here and now that I probably got the idea from one of those stories. Besides, it's historically feasible; look at Prince Philip. No plagiarism intended :)

If his heart is a house, Victoria fills every corner of it. She enters the rooms his mother’s rock-solid strength left orderly but cold, and stirs a blazing fire on the hearth. She walks into the rooms that Caro’s madness wrecked and she straightens the chairs, dusts the neglected books, and sets out vases overflowing with flowers from his greenhouse. She tiptoes into the rooms Caroline Norton started to decorate and left behind, gives them a long, thoughtful look from her keen blue eyes, and completes them with her own special, unique-to-Victoria touch. 

He’s moved by the way she fights for her right to marry him. There are loud cries of protest, of course—from her mother, from King Leopold, from her ministers—but Victoria refuses to budge an inch. _He_ won’t let her fight for a title for him, telling her he’s perfectly content to be known as Lord Melbourne for the rest of his life and that fanciful titles like “king consort” are for husbands of Queens who need their confidence propped up. 

When she informs him that she’s making him the _Duke_ of Melbourne, he raises his eyebrows.

“I’ve told you before, Ma’am, that is wholly unnecessary.” (He can’t seem to stop calling her “Ma’am,” even when they’re alone.) 

“And as I’ve promised _you_ , Lord M, I’ve insisted on nothing.” Victoria straightens a stack of paperwork on her desk and gives him a mischievous, sidelong look. “Did you ever stop to think that perhaps my ministers are shuddering at the thought of me marrying a ‘mere viscount?’ ”

William raises his eyebrows again, this time in muted surprise. “Ah…”

Victoria smiles proudly. “Enjoy your unasked-for elevation, _Duke_.”

All this means is that when he stands at the altar at Westminster Abbey, he stands as a man of much higher rank than he’d been when he stood at another altar years ago and turned to see a Fairy Queen swathed in white, trying desperately not to skip to his side. Now he turns to see a real Queen clad in ivory, with orange blossoms in her dark hair and diamonds at her throat. 

Caro looked like she’d been about to jump out of her skin at their wedding, all happy nerves and excitement, with a flash of sensual anticipation in her green eyes. Victoria looks like she’s having a hard time catching her breath, too, and _he_ knows she’s nervous because he knows _her_ —the way she shivers when he takes her hand to recite his vows, the way her fingers shake as she forces the almost-too-small ring onto his finger, the way she blushes when the bishop pronounces them man and wife. 

But she never loses her majesty, or her sense of reverence for the ceremony. 

He is so, so proud of her. And he can’t quite believe this is actually happening to him. 

 

————

     

Their life isn’t full of the carefree passion he and Caro shared during their first days of marriage. For one thing, Victoria is a Queen with real responsibilities; she has things to _do_ and can’t drop them all for a frantic ride through the park. For another, she’s not going to embarrass herself with any thoughtless antics in full view of God and everybody. 

In the privacy of their own rooms, of course, she’s demonstrative— _very_ much so. And when they nearly get caught in a passionate kiss in her study by Lehzen a few week after the wedding, she’s breathless with laughter over the idea of Lehzen seeing such a thing. 

But that’s just pure mischief, _not_ a perverse desire to be the scandalous center of attention.

He still helps with her work, though he tries to restrict himself to explaining difficult phrases or words, or helping her untangle age-old political issues. They have two desks set up next to one another; while she pores over her red boxes he maintains his own massive correspondence, reads the papers, and studies the life and writings of Chrystostom (he _is_ going to finish that book of his one day). Some days, he simply blots her signatures. She’s grateful for _that_ bit of help: it gives her one less thing to do _and_ gives her one more excuse to keep him close by. 

When she does ask his advice, he speaks with great care. Constitutionally, he’s in a tight spot: as a former Prime Minister of the Whig party, he _mustn’t_ sway her against her new Tory government. He thinks, though, that he may be succeeding here, because when she grumbles one morning that she’d rather face a firing squad than meet with Sir Robert Peel _one more time_ , he takes her by the shoulders, looks her in the eye, and says firmly: 

“You want to keep me around, don’t you?”

Victoria sputters, a little indignant at the suggestion. “Of course I do—”

“Then you must remember that if you’re not at least _civil_ , they’ll start pointing fingers at _me._ ” He tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “You must do this for _us_ , Victoria…and never let them see how hard it is to bear.”

She sighs at the old counsel and lets her gaze drift to the side a moment before looking at him again. The corner of her mouth tilts upward. 

“You always were persuasive, Lord M,” she teases. 

He pulls a wry face. “Well…you know I’ve _always_ urged a strict course of impartiality.”

Her laughter reassures him more than any verbal promises to be polite to Peel ever could.

      

————     

 

If his heart is a house then he learns a little over a year later that it will never run out of room for love. It can only expand. 

When Victoria tells him she’s pregnant he’s beside himself. So is England. He’s proving more popular than he would’ve expected as the Queen’s husband, and people are delighted over the prospect of a Princess Royal or Prince of Wales. As for her ministers, they’re just relieved that the Duke of Cumberland is edging further and further out of the picture—even if the next heir to the throne also happens to be the son or daughter of William Lamb.

But here’s where William discovers another difference between his first wife and his second: unlike Caro, Victoria hates pregnancy. The first few weeks, she can barely lift her head off her pillow without nausea overwhelming her. Once that’s past she does have several months of boundless energy, refusing to limit her public appearances even though her belly is growing and rounding—but the last few weeks, she’s miserable.

Sometimes she lies uncomfortably on her side with her head in William’s lap, and he reads to her until she goes to sleep. Sometimes she just sulks on the settee, munching sweetmeats as if devouring them is an act of defiance against anyone (her mother, usually) who says she’d better stop before she gets fat. 

But then there are brighter moments where she and William walk arm-in-arm in the Buckingham gardens and she runs her free hand over her enormous abdomen with a certain little smile that he understands. This baby kicking fiercely inside of her, he or she is the product of _their_ love... _and he’s going to be a father again._  

Sometimes the thought unsettles him. He’s not the carefree William Lamb who first held tiny Augustus in his arms so many years ago. When he expresses his doubts to Victoria, though, she looks at him across their combined desk as if he’s grown two extra heads. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, almost laughing. “You’re the gentlest man I know. You’ll be a wonderful father to this baby.”

“But will she be ashamed of me one day? A father with a past that’s still bandied about behind his back every time he shows up for a levee?”

He regrets the bitter note in his voice as soon as he sees the humor drain out of Victoria’s face. She purses her lips, gets out of her chair with difficulty, goes to the sofa where he’s sitting with his paper. She sits down next to him and lays her small, smooth hand over his larger one. 

“ _I’m_ not ashamed of you,” she whispers. “And she—or _he_ —won’t be either. Not while I live to tell and teach them otherwise.”

She squeezes his hand, and there’s nothing but loving confidence in her smile. 

 

————

 

When her pains start in the middle of the night he reminds himself that at least he’s done this before. He has no reason to be nervous. He knows how this works, and besides, Victoria may be small but she’s twice as strong as Caro was. 

It doesn’t help much. He’s _still_ anxious. Victoria groans, paces, eases herself onto her knees at the side of the bed, buries her face in her folded arms. The doctor and Lehzen shoot him dark, baleful looks that tell him, plain as the noses on their faces, to _get out_. He tries to oblige, rubbing Victoria’s back one last time and whispering that she can do this, he’ll be just outside—

When he says the word “outside” her head jerks up. Victoria grabs his forearm so tightly, her nails dig into his skin. 

“Don’t leave me,” she whispers. “Please, please don’t leave me.”

The words, eerily familiar, send a shiver down his spine: Caro said the same exact words during her labor with _their_ child. William glances at the stone-faced Lehzen…and decides she can glare all she wants. He lowers himself to his knees beside her and folds his arms next to hers on the bed. 

“As you wish, Ma’am,” he murmurs, half-teasing. Victoria smiles weakly, then lowers her head again and moans through another wave of pain.

Her screams a few hours later tear into him like knives. Her dark hair clings to her reddening face as she heaves her upper body forward over and over again, holding her breath for a few seconds and collapsing against the pillows with a choking gasp. The doctor, kneeling between her legs, keeps his face impassive. Lehzen bites her nails. William strokes Victoria’s hair back from her forehead. 

“You can do this,” he whispers. “I _know_ you can.”

She can’t speak; she just looks at him, her eyes shot through with agony and exhaustion. She forces herself back up for one last push, silent at first, then groaning, then screaming and screaming until William’s blood feels like it’s curdling, and then—

She throws herself back, pulls in a sobbing breath, and a high-pitched, raspy baby-shriek fills the high-ceilinged bedroom where, a little over three years ago when the place was still dusty and unused, Lord Melbourne told Victoria of England that she was every inch a queen. 

     

————

 

When Lehzen hands him his daughter—a perfect little being with ten perfect fingers, ten perfect toes, and a perfect, fine-tipped nose that looks just like Victoria’s—William nearly weeps. He’s always been a man of great feeling, but as he looks down at his second chance at fatherhood, the sense that he might be dreaming overwhelms him. 

His vision blurs as he strokes the velvety cheek with the back of his index finger. The baby has stopped crying (finally) and stares up at him with big eyes that look as though they may one day turn green. Her tiny rosebud lips curve in a wondering“O” shape. William pulls in a ragged breath and kisses her forehead. 

“Don’t monopolize her,” Victoria calls from the bed. “Let _me_ see, too.”

He walks slowly to the bed and lowers himself to a seat beside her, carefully lowering the tiny bundle into the crook of her arm. She gasps a little when she sees the baby’s face, then laughs in delight. 

“She looks like you!” she cries. 

“Heaven help her, then,” he tries to joke. “I beg to differ, though. She bears a remarkable resemblance to her mother.”

Victoria quirks an eyebrow at him. “I’d argue with you, but I know you’ll never take a compliment. I’m too tired to plead my case, anyway.”

He smiles, tucks her damp hair behind her ear. Victoria sighs a little at the touch, then looks at her baby again. 

“What should we call her?” she asks. 

“Well, there’s no question about that,” he says briskly. “She looks like a ‘Victoria’ to me.”

“You’re not going to let me argue about that, either, are you?”

“Not at all.”

Victoria laughs. “All right…but only if her second name is ‘Elizabeth.’ For _your_ mother…and for us.”

 _For us._ For the Elizabeth and Leicester they once thought themselves to be.

He kisses her forehead in agreement. Victoria smiles at him and together they turn their attention back to the baby who’ll soon be called “Vicky” by a mother who can’t help but bestow affectionate nicknames to the people she loves best. 

Sitting there with his two girls, William Lamb thinks, contentedly, that there’s no need to put on any false smiles today. 

 

THE END


End file.
